Thick-set, massive, heavy, almost warlike it is. Two seated statues
within, statues with animals' faces, steel-colored, or perhaps a little
darker than that, look like savage warders ready to repel intrusion.

Passing between them, delicately as Agag, one enters an open space with
ruins, upon the right of which is a low, small temple, grey in hue, and
covered with inscriptions, which looks almost bowed under its tremendous
weight of years. From this dignified, though tiny, veteran there comes a
perpetual sound of birds. The birds in Egypt have no reverence for age.
Never have I seen them more restless, more gay, or more impertinent,
than in the immemorial ruins of the ancient land. Beyond is an enormous
portal, on the lofty ceiling of which still linger traces of faded
red and blue, which gives access to a great hall with rows of mighty
columns, those on the left hand round, those on the right square, and
almost terribly massive. There is in these no grace, as in the giant
lotus columns of Karnak. Prodigious, heavy, barbaric, they are like a
hymn in stone to Strength. There is something brutal in their aspect,
which again makes one think of war, of assaults repelled, hordes beaten
back like waves by a sea-wall. And still another great hall, with more
gigantic columns, lies in the sun beyond, and a doorway through which
seems to stare fiercely the edge of a hard and fiery mountain. Although
one is roofed by the sky, there is something oppressive here; an
imprisoned feeling comes over one. I could never be fond of Medinet-Abu,
as I am fond of Luxor, of parts of Karnak, of the whole of delicious,
poetical Philae. The big pylons, with their great walls sloping
inward, sand-colored, and glowing with very pale yellow in the sun, the
resistant walls, the brutal columns, the huge and almost savage scale
of everything, always remind me of the violence in men, and also--I
scarcely know why--make me think of the North, of sullen Northern
castles by the sea, in places where skies are grey, and the white of